<P>Xavier Le Roy <BR><I>Self-Unfinished</I><BR>Théâtre du Maurier, Monument-National<BR>Festival International de Nouvelle Danse<BR>September 21, 2001<P>"I feel like I just spent an hour watching a guy with his head up his ass," was what my friend Eric had to say after watching <I>Self-Unfinished</I>. I had to concur. <P>Xavier LeRoy has taken navel gazing to an all time low. Spending most of the show with his legs over his head and his back to the audience, clothed and later unclothed, he could have been contemplating the universe for all I know, but I'm sure his thoughts had more to do with himself, hence the use of 'self' in the title. <P>At his most entertaining he walked with his hands on the floor and his dress, a Graham-esque lycra number, pulled over his head. When he was naked and the audience only had his twitching bum to look at a lot of people giggled at the sight, but I wasn't exactly thrilled. If LeRoy had something to say about himself, anything else, or was doing something the slightest bit interesting, then seeing his bum in all its shinning glory would have been fine with me. <P>As I waited for the show to wind it's way to a close, I contemplated applauding in order to force an early exodus. So when LeRoy finally put his clothes back on, turned on the boombox, and slipped out through the audience, I was grateful. We were left listening to Diana Ross sing Upside Down. Maybe the BeeGee's Jive talkin' would have been a better choice.<P><a href="http://www.festivalnouvelledanse.ca/video_56k/self-unfinished.mov"><B>video excerpt 56k</B></a><BR><a href="http://www.festivalnouvelledanse.ca/video_dsl/self-unfinishedDSL.mov"><B>video excerpt DSL</B></a><BR><p>[This message has been edited by Marie (edited June 01, 2002).]

French-born, Berlin-based Xavier Le Roy came to dancing late, after training as a microbiologist. It makes sense, then, that his 50-minute solo, Self-Unfinished (*******, October), presented in a stark white space set into the black-box theater, should first deconstruct human locomotion and then demonstrate that the human body is infinitely (indeed, eerily) mutable.

NEW YORK -- If he were alive, what would Theophile Gautier have thought of Xavier Le Roy's solo adaptation of his libretto for "Giselle" ("Giszelle")? Possibly, Gautier's brain would have been so addled with hashish, he would have seen little pansies mincing through Rhineland window sills. The audience at The ******* on October 11, however, assumedly sober as a judge, saw arrogant mimetic posturing standing in for insight and beauty.

French-born, Berlin-based Xavier Le Roy came to dancing late, after training as a microbiologist. It makes sense, then, that his 50-minute solo, Self-Unfinished (*******, October), presented in a stark white space set into the black-box theater, should first deconstruct human locomotion and then demonstrate that the human body is infinitely (indeed, eerily) mutable. Le Roy begins by turning himself into a postmodern Coppélia doll, moving as if the sequential postures and steps that normally connect and flow in a living being had been reduced to small, discrete elements executed by a creaky inanimate mechanism. Next he works with tricks of perception. Half naked, half sheathed in black stretch jersey, he poses his body so as to tease us with anatomical ambiguities: Are we looking at shoulders or buttocks? Legs or arms? Man, brachiopod, or extraterrestrial? Only at the end, with seeming reluctance, does he reveal the body parts in which we human creatures invest our identity: the genitals and the face. Is Le Roy inviting us to understand all this as metaphor as well as physical phenomenon? If so, I felt too tired to do so. The metaphors are banal, and I have been here before: with Alwin Nikolais and his descendants, with Pilobolus and its offshoots, et al. MORE>>>click

Xavier Le Roy's Giszelle opens and closes with the familiar music of Adolphe Adam's score. Apart from that, it has little in common with the Romantic ballet. In the solo, one of two presented at the *******, Le Roy's approach is like a man interested in a woman for only one reason. But it's not as dirty as it sounds: He's just after her icon status.

The French choreographer, a former molecular biologist based in Berlin, conjures hallucinogenic worlds through dance. No matter how riveting the final effect, however, Le Roy achieves his goals using simple means. As his solos unfold, there are moments in which your own body can't help but react to the dips and turns, as if a floor has dropped from beneath you. The amazing part is that Le Roy doesn't rely on technology; the body is his tool.

Le Roy created Giszelle for the astonishing Hungarian dancer Eszter Salamon in 2001. The solo places Salamon in a seemingly impossible position: interpreter of two thousand years of cultural icons.

....The French choreographer [Xavier LeRoy] performs two heralded solo pieces at the Institute of Contemporary Art tonight and tomorrow. On April 9, he’ll stage another solo work for members of the MIT community, and on April 24 he will premiere “More Floor Pieces,’’ a group work created in part at MIT, with local performers.

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